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Why risk everything you’ve worked for?

Most good chess players rely on having a strong strategy in place to increase their chances of beating their opponent and winning the tournament. In life, the same rules apply and those who take the time to plan ahead succeed. All your hard earned assets could be lost if you don’t make the time today to put some simple planning in place.

Wills – Many people put off making a Will for a variety of reasons, but the harsh truth is that you can put off making a Will until it’s too late, causing all kinds of problems for the people you leave behind and end up giving some, or all of your inheritance, to the wrong people or even the State!

Trusts – Using Trusts are an important part of any estate planning strategy and not only for the very wealthy if you want to protect your hard earned assets after you are gone, for future generations against attack from, Remarriage, Divorce, Bankruptcy, Long Term Care and Inheritance Tax.

Lasting Powers of Attorney – Managing your own affairs can be difficult later in life, or you could become seriously ill or even have an accident. Who would look after your financial affairs then? Who would make decisions for you regarding your medical treatment, living arrangements or care? Creating Lasting Powers of Attorney in advance, ensures that if the worst were to happen both your financial affairs and personal welfare are in safe hands.

Funeral Plans – Free your loved ones from the financial and emotional burdens of paying for and organising your Funeral after you are gone. Act now to ensure that your wishes are carried out exactly as you would want, and also freeze the cost of your funeral at todays prices.

Probate – Many people choose relatives or close friends as their Executors but this can be a difficult and time consuming job, at a time when they may not feel up to the task. Appointing a professional Executor in your Will ensures that your estate is dealt with as quickly and efficiently as possible. Fixed costs at the outset, along with a dedicated team of sympathetic and expert case handlers on hand ensures that the entire process is stress free.

Prepare for the game ahead with us and ensure that you and your loved ones are protected, for more information please call us on 0161 771 2056 or email us at help@FinanceNorthEPS.co.uk, or simply enter your details below and one of our consultants will contact you.

He left a fortune of £2,740,000 from which the ex-Prime Minister received the sum of £300,000, but what is interesting is that:-

He appointed his children as Executors and Trustees.

He and his wife owned their home as Tenants in Common rather than joint owners.

His half of the home went into Trust rather than directly to his widow.

Trusts have been instrumental in mitigating tax since the Medieval times. Trusts were initially created for the Nobility and wealthy landowners to avoid paying taxes to the Crown. Nowadays, you don’t have to be a Nobleman, or a wealthy landowner to want to take advantage of the many tax strategies Trusts can provide.

The use of Trusts ensures that assets are protected from attack from the following.

Care Fees

Divorce / Separation

Creditors / Bankruptcy

Inheritance Tax

Generational Inheritance Tax

We have advised many clients from all walks of life in protecting their homes and other assets, so that their children and grandchildren can maximise their inheritance, and we have now launched a fixed price package to specifically tackle the above problems at an affordable price for all home owners and from all walks of life.

Firstly you will receive a free no obligation home visit from one of our trained consultants which usually takes about 1hr where you can ask any questions and discuss the matter in more detail.

Once you have decided to proceed we will take all the necessary instructions and then commence constructing a Will each, a Flexible Family Trust each with Memorandum of Wishes and also a Deed of Severance. Within approximately 2 weeks your consultant will return with all the documents for signing.

On first death, the deceased’s share of the property is passed into their Flexible Family Trust via the Will. The surviving Spouse or Partner continues to live in the property and is still able to move home if they choose to do so. In the event that the survivor enters care, the survivor only owns half a share of the family home.

The beneficiaries have access to the Trust Funds but we ensure that these assets do not enter their estates and so are protected from attack by the following:

Marriage after Death – Placing half of the family home and other assets into a Trust on first death ensures that, should the surviving spouse or partner marry in the future, those assets cannot be taken into the marriage and removes the threat of your children being disinherited.

Divorce – Placing your assets into a trust ensures if your children or chosen beneficiaries are subject to a divorce then what you intended them to receive is protected from any divorce settlements.

Creditors – Similarly if any of your beneficiaries are subject to Creditor claims or bankruptcy then their inheritance would not be exposed to these claims.

Care Costs – The trust ensures that they do not add onto the beneficiaries own estates and so cannot be assessed for their care costs.

Further or Generational IHT – Holding the assets in the trust ensures that they do not add to the beneficiaries estates and impact on their own Inheritance Tax.

For more information, please call 0161 771 2056 or simply complete the form below
and one of our consultants will gladly answer any questions you may have.

There are few taxes more unpopular than inheritance tax. A poll by the financial website, loveMONEY last year found that an incredible 90% of Brits believe it is unfair.

However, there are a number of perfectly legitimate ways to reduce the amount of tax your estate will have to pay. One of those is making use of a Trust.

What is a Trust?

A Trust is a legal arrangement where your assets – such as property, cash or investments – are given to trustees, who will oversee them for the benefit of a third person. For example, you might want to put some savings into a Trust which your children can then benefit from at a later date.

When you place items into a Trust, they technically no longer belong to you. As a result, when it comes to working out the inheritance tax due on your estate, they aren’t included.

Instead, the assets belong to the Trust. The trustees are charged with managing those assets in the interest of the beneficiaries you have named, until some time when those beneficiaries can take control.

The many different types of Trust

Trusts come in a variety of different forms, which will suit different circumstances.

The simplest form is a Bare Trust – this basically hands over ownership of the assets to the beneficiary immediately, so long as they are over the age of 18.

Alternatively, there is an Interest in Possession Trust. This gives the beneficiary income from the assets held within the Trust, but they don’t have a right to the assets generating that income. An example of this is that you might put shares in this form of Trust which would pay an income to your partner, but your children would get ownership of the shares themselves once your partner died.

Then there is the Discretionary Trust, which is where the trustees have responsibility for deciding how the assets within the Trust are distributed. You could therefore leave assets in the Trust for your grandchildren, with your children named as the trustees. They could then determine who gets what at a later date.

Dividing your assets

Trusts are a useful way to take control of passing on your assets to your loved ones and can serve as a complement to a comprehensive Will. Without a Will in place, you have no say on who will get your assets and could put your loved ones through further heartache after your passing.

Like this:

Around a third of parents are unwilling to leave an inheritance to their children or provide them with financial aid, as they are concerned that divorce may mean that money leaves the family.

This is according to research from Investec Investment & Wealth, which found that 14% of parents had little or no confidence that their children’s marriages would last a lifetime.

It is perhaps an understandable concern, with around 42% of marriages failing, according to the Office for National Statistics.

There are, however, steps you can take to ensure that your money ends up in the right hands – irrespective of how successful your child might be at finding a long-lasting partner.

Make use of your gift allowance

The research found that one in six parents are opting to give their loved ones small financial gifts to help with the cost of living, rather than large lump sums.

It’s important to remember that everyone has a £3,000 annual gift allowance, covering financial gifts you can hand over each year, free of inheritance tax. On top of that you can give away up to £250 to any number of people each year.

Skip a generation

According to the research, around 14% of parents are skipping a generation and instead looking to leave assets to their grandchildren.

Put it in trust

The study found that one in seven parents are considering putting the money into a discretionary trust, which could be a useful way to protect the money from a divorce.

With a discretionary trust, it is up to the trustees to determine how and when any potential beneficiaries may be able to access the cash. You can appoint yourself as the trustee, so that you have final say over where the money goes, or you can go for an independent trustee. What’s more, the money within the trust is classed as separate from your estate, so it’s free of Inheritance Tax.

It’s important to consider exactly how you want your assets to be divided up among your loved ones, and get those wishes down in the form of a comprehensive will. Speak to our team today at Finance North Estate Planning Services, call 0161 771 2056 or complete the form below and one of our consultants will contact you to help you get your will in place.

It’s no secret that there is a care crisis in the UK.

In order to deliver social care, the Government is being forced to consider increasing council tax to help cover the costs. However, the cost facing the individual, should they require care, could be very high too.

If you have savings and assets worth more than £23,250 in England and Northern Ireland (rising to £24,000 in Wales or £26,250 in Scotland), or a weekly income high enough to cover care fees, then you will not be eligible for local authority funding. In other words, you’ll have to pay for your own care.

In order to reduce their care liabilities, older people may therefore look to giving away their assets to loved ones. However, where gifting is concerned, there are strict rules which must be followed.

Deliberate deprivation

It’s not easy to hide the fact that you may have tried to give your property away to your children or grandchildren. Local authorities will carry out a financial assessment, looking not only at your current assets, but also those that you have previously owned.

If they believe you have given away assets intentionally, in order to qualify for funding from the local authority, they may find that you have indulged in ‘deliberate deprivation’. This may include selling assets for less than their true value, as well as giving them away.

What makes it deliberate?

To determine whether the disposal of assets was deliberate, the local authority will look at a number of things. These include:
– What your apparent motive was,
– The timing of the gift (i.e. the time between you realising you need care and when you disposed of the asset),
– The amount of assets involved.

For example, they are less likely to investigate you if you give away £500 than if you are handing over £50,000.

If it is found that you have deliberately deprived yourself of those assets, even if you no longer own them, their value may be considered in the financial assessment. If the local authority does fund someone’s care costs, and later discover that the individual deliberately deprived themselves of assets, they can pursue that asset transferee in order to recover some of those care costs.

It’s not just during your life that you need to carefully plan how to hand your assets over to your loved ones. It is also vital to put together a plan for what happens after you die. This means ensuring you have a professional will in place. With important issues such as these, it pays to work with those who really know what they are doing. We can help.

For more information with protecting your assets during your lifetime and after your death call Finance North Estate Planning Services on 0161 771 2056, or enter your details in the enquiry form below.

A mother who wrote a wish list for her two sons after being diagnosed with breast cancer has been immortalised on film, with the release of Mum’s List starring Emilia Fox.

Kate Greene, Somerset born died in 2010 aged just 37 and wrote down her hopes and ambitions for her boys Reef (12) and Finn (10). She also included instructions for their father, St John which included ‘buy orange Club biscuits regularly’ and ‘always kiss them goodnight’.

Kate left her family 79 wishes and after her death, St John (known as ‘Singe’) wrote a book about her battle against cancer and her legacy of love. It became a bestseller and was printed in 22 languages.

Singe told The Sun newspaper: “The list’s helped us. We’ve had so much to focus on, from the smallest thing to big things like scuba diving in the Red Sea and getting a speedboat.”

One of Kate’s toughest requests was to find four-leafed clovers.

“I had people scouring the countryside and I sprinkled seeds by her grave, thinking they might grow by her,” Singe said. “After I found one in a field, we searched for more, and in the end we got five in an afternoon. It was incredible.”

The film was shot in the town of Clevedon, where Kate and Singe lived, and had its regional premiere there. It is now showing at cinemas around the country.

Kate’s Wishes:

Go and see the Northern Lights.

Teach the boys to respect women and not to double date!

Grow a sunflower every now and again.

Would like Reef to learn recorder or guitar and Finn to learn the drums and electric keyboard.

Don’t let the boys smoke.

You too can make your wish list, for advice on making a will contact Finance North Estate Planning Services below.

How can I protect my children’s inheritance?

Protecting your inheritance for future generations is commonly referred to as “Bloodline Planning”.

Bloodline Planning is ensuring that your assets reach your children, grandchildren and other relatives, rather than ending up in the wrong hands!

When assets are distributed to beneficiaries “absolutely”, (ie. they receive cash, property or other assets as a direct lump sum payment) so much can be lost. These assets are then considered to be part of the beneficiary’s estate and would be at risk of attack from any future divorce settlements, creditors and taxation.

The strategic use of Trusts can ensure that your children and grandchildren are able to benefit completely from the inheritance you want them to receive and at the same time, protect the family home and other assets from being lost to the costs of Long Term Care.

Without the correct “Bloodline Planning”…

Some, or all of your children’s or grandchildren’s (bloodline’s) inheritance could be lost

Assets not protected by a Trust face attack from…

The Divorce or separation settlements of future generations.

Creditors or Bankruptcy claims.

Further Inheritance Tax bills.

Distributing assets absolutely to beneficiaries exposes those assets to risk.